Bilibili marketing strategies: where should you start?

Bilibili marketing strategies, as of September 2026, are a lab decision. The platform has 371 million monthly users and a community that spends almost two hours a day on the app, but the Brazilian operation is still taking shape, with no local ads, no announced office and no official monetization rules in Portuguese.

Whoever enters now gets cheap learning. Whoever waits for the finished product will end up paying for reach in a community that already belongs to others.

This playbook starts from what's verifiable: the Portuguese app in the stores, the open positions in São Paulo, and what the company itself told investors. Where information doesn't exist yet, the text says so, instead of filling the gap with assumption.

What can a brand do today on Bilibili Brazil?

Today a brand can create a profile, publish videos and live streams, interact with the community, and negotiate directly with creators on Bilibili Brazil. What it can't do is buy ads: the advertising products run in China, and the international sponsored-content marketplace is still in development, according to job postings revealed by Semafor.

Caption: Bilibili marketing strategies fit into a one-quarter lab playbook.

The international app relaunched in August 2026. On the Brazilian Google Play store, "bilibili - your beloved videos" shows an update from August 24th, with a Portuguese interface and AI dubbing to watch creators in other languages. Sign-up no longer requires an ID document, which opened the door for brand accounts.

Local commercial presence is under construction. Exame reported that São Paulo was chosen as the expansion hub, with business development and community management roles aimed at creators, studios and IP holders. That's the team brands will negotiate official partnerships with, once it exists.

The company's business context matters for the decision. Bilibili closed Q2 2026 with advertising revenue of RMB 3.13 billion, up 28%, and CEO Chen Rui said "quality and emotional connection matter more than ever."

The expansion comes from a profitable company, with advertising as its engine. That makes ad products arriving in Brazil a matter of time, not possibility.

To understand what the platform is before planning, it's worth reading what is Bilibili. This article assumes that context and goes straight to the playbook.

How do you build organic brand presence on Bilibili?

Organic presence on Bilibili is built with a clear brand profile, a series of long-form videos published regularly, and active participation in comments and danmaku. Organic social here rewards depth and consistency, and punishes empty volume, because the community filters what deserves attention.

The first step is deciding the channel's role. On Bilibili, a brand that acts as a content publisher (teaches, shows behind-the-scenes, analyzes) has room; a brand that acts as a product showcase doesn't. It's the same rule as Gen Z on other networks, except negative feedback appears right on the image, in real time.

The second step is format. Videos five minutes or longer saw an 18% jump in watch time, per the Q2 earnings call. Brands already producing for YouTube have raw material ready; the adjustment is to title, description and cover, not video production.

The third step is treating internal search as a channel. Bilibili's search ad revenue doubled in a year, which signals active use of search by the audience. A title with search intent, a full description and coherent tags follow the same logic as SEO for social media: the platform changes, user intent doesn't.

The fourth step is using danmaku as research. Every floating comment stamps a specific second of the video, so the brand sees exactly where the audience laughs, disagrees, asks for detail or drops off. That map feeds the next script and replaces much of the creative A/B testing other networks require in paid media.

How do you work with creators on Bilibili?

Working with creators on Bilibili requires, in 2026, direct negotiation, its own contract and an editorial brief, because the official sponsorship marketplace for outside China hasn't launched yet. The relationship between creator and community is more protected than on other networks, and the collaboration needs to look like the creator's own content, not a brand insertion.

Bilibili's creators depend on the community to make a living. CEO Chen Rui reported that more than 3 million creators earned income through the platform in 2025, with average income up 21%, coming from incentives, audience rewards, live-stream gifts and sponsorships. The audience pays the creator, and the creator knows it.

In China, commercial brokering happens through Huahuo, the official marketplace connecting brands to creators, which ensures paid content is disclosed and distributed without algorithmic penalty. That's the model Semafor described as "in development" for international creators. Until it arrives, the path is a direct contract.

To identify Brazilian creators, internal search in Portuguese and the games, technology, anime and study categories are the starting point.

Times Brasil cites monetization requirements such as 1,000 followers or 100,000 views, but there's no official Portuguese-language page. So the brand should confirm with the creator how they get paid and what the platform allows to be declared as sponsorship.

The brief changes in nature. On YouTube, a 60-second brand-scripted insertion is accepted; on Bilibili, the collaboration that works is one where the creator uses the product or topic in their own format, and the brand appears as context.

Combined metrics, video reuse rights and exclusivity terms need to be in the contract from the start.

Paid social on Bilibili: what exists and what doesn't yet?

Paid social exists on Bilibili in China, with native feed ads, sponsored search results, video boosting and a creator marketplace; in Brazil, none of that is available to advertisers in 2026. What a brand can plan today is paid creator partnerships and preparation for when the product arrives.

The company has a reason to bring the product. Advertising is its biggest revenue line, growing 28% in a year, and the global expansion was designed with a sponsored-content marketplace, according to the published job postings.

What doesn't exist is a date. Planning media budget around a resource with no date is the most common mistake with a new channel.

Comparing it with the established market helps keep proportion. YouTube reaches 81.1% of Brazil's internet users and operates inside Google Ads, with intent-based targeting and integrated measurement. That's where paid video traffic keeps delivering at scale, and the detailed decision is in Bilibili vs YouTube.

Preparing for the paid product has three fronts. First, build organic audience now, so a future ad amplifies a community instead of creating one from scratch. Second, document which formats and topics generated reaction, so the paid creative is born already tested.

Third, register the brand account and follow the company's official channels, because early access to new products is usually by invitation.

The playbook's phases are organized like this:

Table: A brand's four-phase Bilibili entry playbook, sized for a one-quarter test.

The playbook fits into one quarter because the cost is team time. If the community hasn't reacted by the end of it, the brand learned cheaply. If it has, the brand arrives at the paid product with an audience, tested creative and known creators.

How do you measure Bilibili marketing strategies?

Measuring Bilibili marketing strategies requires swapping reach metrics for community metrics: retention per video, danmaku density and content, returning followers, live-stream participation, and leads tracked through links and coupons. Raw views say little on a platform whose value lies in the depth of the relationship.

Retention per video is the mother metric. If the audience watches a ten-minute video to the end, the content fits the community; if it drops off in the first minute, the problem is format or topic, and danmaku usually says which.

Compare retention with the same video's retention on YouTube to isolate the platform effect.

Comment content matters more than volume. Long comments grew 67% on the platform in a year, according to the company, and they're what signal intent: a question about price, a request for detail, a comparison with a competitor. Classifying these comments by topic, even in a spreadsheet, turns the channel into continuous market research.

The bridge to the business happens through your own tracking. A link with a campaign parameter in the description, a channel-exclusive coupon, and a dedicated landing page take the lead from Bilibili to the CRM, and from there to a sale or enrollment.

It's the same design that already underpins AI-powered lead generation on other channels: without tracking, the channel becomes opinion.

How does education marketing apply the Bilibili playbook?

In education marketing, the Bilibili playbook applies with open classes and student projects in the publishing phase, subject-matter creators in the collaboration phase, and a veteran-student community as the retention front. It's one sector example: any brand that educates before selling and keeps the relationship after the purchase follows the same design.

In student recruitment, the publishing phase uses what the institution already has. An open class from a technology course, behind-the-scenes footage from an animation lab, or a final project from game-design students are long, useful videos aligned with the platform's core audience.

Danmaku shows which questions come up. Those questions feed the next video and the WhatsApp for recruitment playbook, which starts answering what the audience asked in the video.

In the collaboration phase, the right creator is someone who already speaks to the prospective student. A programming creator who presents the institution's lab in their own format is worth more than a sponsored institutional video. The contract should include a tracked link to the course page and an enrollment coupon, which close the measurement loop.

In student retention, the channel becomes an open internal community. Pre-exam Q&A live streams, series with veteran students about internships and careers, and academic guidance content reinforce belonging for those already enrolled. Since retention costs less than student recruitment, this front tends to deliver the playbook's best return with the least production.

What the institution shouldn't do is transplant its enrollment campaign as is. An enrollment ad disguised as content is the format the Bilibili community identifies and rejects fastest, and the rejection stays recorded right on the video.

Frequently asked questions about Bilibili marketing strategies

Where should you start with Bilibili marketing strategies?

Bilibili marketing strategies start with the observation phase: create the profile, map the Portuguese-speaking creators in your topic, and read the danmaku on videos that already exist about it. Only then do publishing, collaboration and measurement come in. Whoever reverses the order publishes in the dark and reads the community's silence as a channel failure.

What decides continuity is the end of the quarter. Retention comparable to or better than YouTube, comments showing intent, and leads tracked in the CRM indicate the channel deserves the paid phase once it arrives.

The absence of those three things indicates the brand's audience isn't there, and the brand found that out at the cost of team time, not media budget.

The playbook's publishing phase only works if the video gets found, and Bilibili's search has its own rules for title, tags, cover and retention. Before the first upload, it's worth reading SEO for Bilibili, which shows what makes a video show up in the platform's search and closes the entry checklist.